1972 Chevrolet C-10 Cheyenne

Brilliant Disguise: a pickup turned luxury runner

Feature Article from Hemmings Motor News

Brilliant colors. Bucket seats. Razzed-up upholstery. Air conditioning. Sport wheels. A muscular V-8. Pretty strong, aggressive statement of hard-play intentions. And this isn't even a passenger car.
It's a chapter, rather, of an expansively important product evolution in the history of the American automobile industry, one so incredibly big that countless onlookers haven't noticed, or thought of it, in an eternity. Seen any stripper pickup trucks lately? Even from an import brand? That's because the pickup was transformed from dust-caked work tool to driveway plaything decades ago, led by creations such as the Chevrolet Cheyenne.
The Cheyenne wasn't the first truck to stress carlike accessorizing and appearance, even at Chevrolet. Initially, it didn't ring up particularly impressive sales numbers. We submit, still, that the Cheyenne changed the way things were done at Chevrolet when it came to building--selling--light trucks. In retrospect, it can honestly be said to have knocked the truck world off its axis.
Chevrolet was already in the trick-truck business, in a sense, when the Cheyenne arrived for the 1971 model year. You could date it to 1967, when the C/K trucks were fully restyled and a Custom Sport Truck option group added. It grew to include full-length side moldings, a callout beneath the cab windows, white-stripe tires and, interestingly, hubcaps that resembled pre-war Ford wide-five lug patterns. By 1970, close to 10 percent of Chevrolet pickups were CST-optioned.
The experience certainly emboldened Chevrolet, which introduced the Cheyenne package the following year. It combined full carpeting, chromed front and rear bumpers, a wood-grained tailgate insert, upper and lower side moldings, along with extensive embossed vinyl coverings inside. A high percentage of them were sold with either elaborate full wheel covers or rally-type wheels with trim rings. Further optioning ran the gamut from dual-tone paint to air conditioning, although in 1971, power brakes became standard on light-duty GM trucks, with discs up front.
This spectacularly restored 1972 C-10 Cheyenne, owned by Jim Tomlinson of Indianapolis, shows the long stride that these high-end pickups took in just one year of existence. Externally, the biggest change was a new eggcrate grille that replaced the previous center-beam piece. Look inside the cab, and you'll see something more unique: Bucket seats, with a center console dividing them, done up in a new plaid facing scheme called Highlander, toned to match the exterior. To this, Chevrolet added a new model for 1972 named the Super Cheyenne, which added cloth seating and extensive faux-wood cab trim. Jim's extensively optioned C-10, powered by the nearly universal 350-cu.in. V-8, is one of more than 40,000 built in 1972--a 400 percent jump in one year. The luxury pickup had arrived.

This article originally appeared in the October, 2011 issue of Hemmings Motor News.